On the difficulty of recognizing one’s own biases
Another lesson for me on the difficulty of seeing outside your own cultural context: In Delany's City of a Thousand...
Archive for Speculative Fiction
Ziggurat imagery in different tech levels
I've just started reading both Norman Spinrad's 1980 Songs from the Stars (first chapters set in a post-apocalypse quasi-ecotopia in...
Starting points for reading Delany
In the past couple years, there've been about three times when I've had occasion to suggest starting points for reading...
Time and Again
I've somehow for years had the idea that Jack Finney's 1970 novel Time and Again (which I hadn't read) was...
My year in books
In 2016, I read 172 books; an average of roughly one every two days. Well, okay, when I say “read,”...
Arrival
Kam and I saw the movie Arrival on Sunday evening. It was as good as everyone's been saying. I had...
Bradbury editions
I've wondered for years why new printings of the same old mass-market-paperback editions of Bradbury are still on the store...
England Swings SF, Judith Merril, and the New Wave
I'm finally reading Judith Merril's groundbreaking 1968 anthology England Swings SF. Here are some thoughts. i probably ought to...
A history of online sf prozines, 1985-2010
In October of 2010, I decided to write a history on online sf magazines, with a focus on prozines. I...
Gender balance in some old anthologies
Interim report on my father's sf anthologies: 25 sf anthologies recorded in my spreadsheet so far, published from 1953 through...
Reading update
Yesterday, I finished the anthology I'd been reading and skimming for the past few days: Terry Carr's Best Science Fiction...
Truth-tellers in sf
I encounter this idea regularly in stories, both submissions and published: A character is bound (by a vow, by brain...